Michelle-Lee Ahye and Re­yare Thomas will chase T&T’s fourth medal when they line up in the women’s 100 me­tres gold medal race at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in San­ti­a­go, Chile on Tues­day.

On an ex­treme­ly cold evening at the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um on Mon­day, Ahye had to get on her marks three times be­fore she raced across the line in sec­ond place in the third semi­fi­nal heat for an au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fy­ing spot in­to the fi­nal.

She clocked 11.64 sec­onds to fin­ish be­hind Cu­ba’s Yu­nislei­dy Gar­cia, who clocked the fastest qual­i­fy­ing time of 11.53 sec­onds.

“There was just a lot go­ing on out there. I’m just hap­py to be in the fi­nal,” said Ahye af­ter the race. “Af­ter the first two call­backs, I was over it. I’m glad to be healthy. I feel good.”

In the first in­stance when the third and fi­nal heat was sent out, the starter re­called the race, but on­ly Ahye and Gar­cia pulled up while the rest of the field un­know­ing­ly com­plet­ed the race. At the line, they learned that it had to be run over.

Mo­ments lat­er, they were off a sec­ond time but were re­called once more due to a false start. The green card came out as a warn­ing to the en­tire field.

The third try was suc­cess­ful and it was Gar­cia crossed first with a time of 11.53 fol­lowed by Ahye in sec­ond and Colom­bian Lau­ra Mar­tinez in third with 10.70, not quick enough to progress which meant that Thomas’ 11.69 would get the fi­nal spot as one of the fastest losers.

On get­ting the chance to win T&T’s fourth medal at San­ti­a­go 2023, she said: “That’s my goal to get a medal we will see what hap­pens to­mor­row.”

Ear­li­er, Thomas had the ner­vous wait to learn whether she got through to the fi­nal af­ter clock­ing 11.69 sec­onds to place third in the open­ing heat. She fol­lowed the Mex­i­can Ce­cil­ia Tamayo with 11.66 sec­onds and Li­ranyi Alon­so of the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic who clocked 11.69 sec­onds.

“I think I slipped a lit­tle bit in the start I had to make up ground to the end and I thought I had it but I guess they just nip me on the line,” said Thomas dur­ing the wait­ing pe­ri­od.

Ahye and Thomas are the on­ly sprint­ers that will be fea­tured in Tues­day’s fi­nal af­ter Jerod El­cock was elim­i­nat­ed af­ter he crossed fourth in a time of 10.58 sec­onds in the first men’s heat. His race had to be restart­ed due to a false start by Ronal Lon­ga of Co­lum­bia, who was re­moved from the race.

“I was a bit cau­tious in the next round and then that kind of threw me off, throw off my start. I didn’t re­act the way I want­ed to and by the time I got up it was too late,” said El­cock af­ter the race.

Cuban Shain­er Rengi­fo and Alon­so Ed­ward were the au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fiers with times of 10.36 and 10.37, re­spec­tive­ly in the third heat.

On­ly two run­ners ad­vanced from heat two, Er­ic Bar­bosa of Brazil with 10.43 and Diego Gon­za­lez of Puer­to Ri­co with 10.50 sec­onds as heat one was the quick­est semi­fi­nal. Jose Al­nar­do Gon­za­lez of the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic (10.30) and Fe­lipe Bar­di of Brazil (10.33) were the au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fiers, while Guyanese Emanuel Archibald (10.35) and Odaine McPher­son (10.37), the third and fourth-place fin­ish­ers in the open­ing heat ad­vanced as the fastest losers to the medal race.

El­cock will look to put yes­ter­day’s race be­hind him and fo­cus on his next event, the men’s 4x100m along with Ju­dah Tay­lor, Kyle Greaux, and Er­ic Har­ri­son Jr on Thurs­day.

“The 4x100 we go­ing out there to win gold,” said a pos­i­tive El­cock.

To­mor­row (Tues­day), Thomas is ex­pect­ed to be back on the track in women’s 200m semi­fi­nal heats.

Thus far, T&T has three medals thanks to Nicholas Paul’s gold and sil­ver in the men’s sprint and keirin events and a bronze from the 3x3 bas­ket­ball team of Chike Au­gus­tine, Mori­ba De Fre­itas, and twin broth­ers Ah­keel and Ah­keem Boyd.

T&T’s women’s hock­ey team could not stop the on­slaught by Ar­genti­na, one of the top teams in the world, and suf­fered its biggest mar­gin of de­feat at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in San­ti­a­go, Chile.

The lo­cal “Stick­women”, coached by Akim Tou­s­saint, fell to a huge 21-0 loss in the open­ing match at the Hock­ey Sports Cen­tre on an­oth­er cold morn­ing in the cap­i­tal city.

“We knew ex­act­ly what we were go­ing in­to against Ar­genti­na, the top team in the en­tire world so the plan was just to make sure that it doesn’t get out of hand, not too bad, just make sure we didn’t get any more in­juries be­cause we al­ready have a lot of in­juries for the tour­na­ment,” said Tou­s­saint af­ter an­oth­er lop­sided group stage match.

Au­gusti­na Gorze­lany led the charge for Ar­genti­na with six goals, Maria Granat­to bagged three goals, five-some Valenti­na Ra­poso, Sofia Cairo, Del­fi­na Thome, Eu­ge­nia Trinchinet­ti, and Juli­eta Janku­nas, each scored a dou­ble, and duo Maria Cam­poy and Vic­to­ria Sauze had one apiece.

Un­der­manned T&T did well to hold off the Ar­ge­tini­ans ear­ly in the match but it last­ed un­til the ninth minute when Cam­poy net­ted the first of eight penal­ty cor­ner goals in the one-sided match., Three min­utes lat­er, Cairo found the back of the net, to give the pow­er­house a 2-0 lead which T&T man­aged to keep them at, at the end of the first quar­ter.

How­ev­er, on the re­sump­tion, it went down­hill for T&T from there. Ar­genti­na added six goals in the sec­ond quar­ter with Gorze­lany scor­ing three-straight goals—back-to-back - penal­ty cor­ners in the 22nd and 23rd and a field goal in the 24th minute to hold an 8-0 ad­van­tage at half­time.

The Ar­gen­tini­ans dou­bled their score in the third quar­ter - three from Granat­to (33rd, 40th, 42nd), two from Gorze­lany (36th, 43rd), and one each from Trinchinette (32d), Thome (40th), and Janku­nas (43rd).

It was much of the same in the fourth and fi­nal quar­ter with Ar­genti­na dom­i­nat­ing and clos­ing out the huge vic­to­ry against T&T, who were again with­out sev­er­al play­ers due to in­jury in­clud­ing cap­tain Alana Lewis, Sha­ni­ah De Fre­itas, and Zene Hen­ry.

“There are two oth­er play­ers with nig­gling in­juries as well like Kather­ine Ben­jamin, No 17, she played with a frac­tured fin­ger for the tour­na­ment so far, so it’s just for us to try to man­age them as well as pos­si­ble and see how we go in­to the next round,” said Tou­s­saint, a for­mer se­nior na­tion­al men’s play­er.

“The in­juries are a mix­ture of lack of prepa­ra­tion as well as just nig­gling stuff that hap­pened on the field be­cause they went in­to that first game which was quite tough as well. I think that’s where the in­juries start­ed com­ing,”

The 21-0 vic­to­ry helped the Ar­gen­tini­ans score nine points from their three match­es ad­vance to the top of the points ta­ble and earn a spot in the semi­fi­nals.

As for Team TTO, this is not the first time they’ve been at the los­ing end of a white­wash vic­to­ry. The lo­cal team con­ced­ed de­feat to the Unit­ed States (15-0) and to Uruguay (11-0). The win­less T&T sits at the bot­tom of group A.

“We are go­ing to go as hard as we can for this fifth to eighth place,” said Tou­s­saint. “I think the teams go­ing for the fifth and eighth place are clos­er to our lev­el so now we re­al­ly have a chance to ac­tu­al­ly try to snatch a vic­to­ry.”

Tou­s­saint has re­mained pos­i­tive through­out the tough out­ings and ad­mit­ted that more needs to be done by the pow­ers that be, for this coun­try to be com­pet­i­tive against the high­er-ranked teams in the com­pe­ti­tion.

“Well that’s go­ing to have to be com­ing from help from the TTHB (T&T Hock­ey Board) as well as the gov­ern­ment, cause we need a wa­ter-based turf to be able to train con­stant­ly. We had to train at the ball­park and had to come up with the mon­ey to find to get to play at the ball­park for five days for the week,” said Tou­s­saint.

Mean­while, T&T ta­ble ten­nis play­er Rheann Chung lost 4-0 to Cuban Daniela Fon­se­ca in the women’s sin­gles com­pe­ti­tion.

The pre­lim­i­nary round-of-32 match on ta­ble two at the Olympic Train­ing Cen­tre in Nunoa was one-sided from the start with Chung los­ing the first three games, 11-7, 11-1, and 11-5.

The 38-year-old had to win the fourth game to stay alive but lost it 11-6, for a fi­nal score of 4-0.